Read and post notes on the following:
(1) McWilliam, E. (2010) Learning culture, teaching economy
(2) Purves (1993) Setting standards in the language arts and literature classroom and the implications for portfolio assessment
(3) Sawch (2011) Asking and arguing fact and fiction: using inquiry and critical literacy to make sense of literature in the world
Finally, I was able to post my comments on the blog...:)
ReplyDeleteAs discussed in class on Monday, posing the "right" questions is essential in providing students the platform and opportunity to think critically and analytically. Sawch's approach with fiction and non-fiction seems interesting and powerful in providing that opportunity. Students not only ask and answer their own questions, they also become content experts. However, while it is powerful, it is also highly challenging. The marriage of the fiction and non-fiction texts is crucial. The issue / theme to interrogate from the text is another important aspect. I am interested to know if there are other studies of a similar approach being used and what fiction and non-fiction texts are used.
ReplyDeleteJust like Rashmi, the article by Purves reminds me of our benchmarking exercise, which is very much like the standardization exercise we do for Continuous Writing in primary schools. Although the descriptors are there to aid us in the awarding of marks, we make judgments of quality based on our own "inherent standards", expectations, perceptions, etc. since "quality is a matter of perception" (p.183) and we "rate what (we) perceive" (p.184). But of course, as teachers we have to be specific as to why it is judged as such. Portfolio assessment has its potential, but like any other forms of assessment, it has to be purposeful. It should not just simply be collections of work. It should show the process of learning and as Purves suggest, should display growth. One question: will portfolio assessment be well-accepted in an exam-oriented environment like ours?
Welcome Rashmi!
ReplyDeleteI found Sawch's (2011) ideas on how she made the'teach to the test'imperative work for her, inspiring as well. In a retrospective look at her aims, she says that "(w)hat originally started as a form of test preparation and a way to teach the AP synthesis essay turned into a way to help shape students as critical thinkers and activists" (p 85) Although she suggests that test preparation was the teological aim, her procedures in allowing for and encouraging student-directed inquiry and the nature of the writing task mediated what would have otherwise been a teacher-led exercise. The task required students to generate Essential Questions and synthesize knowledge across a range of texts- a challeging affair which demands student engagement from the start.
McWilliam offers a sobering reminder that although teachers can design such tasks, schooled literacies by and large are outdated and irrelevant. Our schools, she observes, are low-risk environments which as institutions concern themselves with "risk minimization." They are "products of the Industrial and Information Ages of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As cultural systems, they were not designed for the high-level learning challenges in what Daniel Pink calls the Conceptual Age (Pink, 2005), the age in which we now live." (p291)
In the Conceptual Age, should teachers continue to view the test as a teological aim? Are we testing what we value? Or should teachers, students, parents and the wider community be discouraged from regarding the test as a form of preparation in what is likely to be an irrelevant skill in an unpredictable future?
Brigit
Sometimes I wonder if we are over-thinking things. Is it really that hard to create an environment suited to the "production" of such competencies? Aren't all children (before they enter the environs of formal schooling) creative individuals who "automatically" ask Essential Questions and synthesize knowledge across a range of texts they pick up in their interaction with their immediate world? I think children think very critically, creatively and analytically and it is the schools, as Brigit says, "products of the Industrial and Information Ages of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries" that muffle this ethos.
ReplyDeleteYes, School literacies are still important because they get us jobs, as Mark Warschauer (in Mcwilliam's article) points out "competence in traditional literacies is often a gateway to successful entry into the world of new literacies" (290). Yet if these are the new literacies we value, then we need to think of new forms of testing and schooling them, only then can we truly claim to be "moulding the future" we want.
For a start, perhaps curriculum content could be synchronized across all subjects and students encouraged to draw links between what they learn in Mathematics, Economics, Science, History, Art, Geography , Literature etc. To be very honest, this is the type of education I always wished (very badly) I had since I was in Secondary school! I always hated having to pick and choose subject combinations because I thought each subject had something to offer and they were interesting and connected in some way. And that's why I was happy to hear of the Liberal Arts college coming to Singapore and also the IB schools. These new initiatives always make me envious, I wish I was born 15 years later!
Sawch's article while it perhaps spoke the 'truth' got me really irked because it reiterated that creativity can be learnt but it did not counter arguments that creativity is a genetically inherent quality. She stops at mentioning that creativity is not the prerogative of PhD students.
ReplyDeleteThat creativity needs to be 'taught' in order to prepare students for the new economy is also something I take issue with. It appears to me that with every change in the world economy, we will be producing a new breed of people through our educational system.
The term knowledge-based economy was all too familiar because I think it gave rise to many an initiave by the MOE such as Thinking schools learning nation, teach less learn more. That children should be engaged in 'serious' play, not one that has an educational objective, reminds me of the drive towards holistic education where students are allocated more curricular time for PE and aesthetics.